Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Escaping my hiding place - Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN


“It’s important to listen to what people are really saying to you;

It is the words which they don’t say which hide the magic!”


A couple of uneventful days passed and I was sitting around doing nothing much, when I had a knock on the door. I couldn’t answer it though; I was in the middle of something. Thing is I was on the toilet, as you do, I don’t know why admitting that has to be so embarrassing, I mean we all do it. Anyway, as I was sitting there trying to contemplate whether I should just not answer it when it suddenly occurred to me that it might be Jenny, coming around having changed her mind about how sweet I was. So I rushed to finish, which if you have ever tried isn’t actually easy to do. Still potentially having sex is always a great motivator. And at least I discovered exactly how painful it is when you release the elastic of your pants while it hovers over your nether regions, quite painful by the way.

Then having finish and then rushing to answer the door I discovered it wasn’t even Jenny anyway, still I wasn’t at all disappointed when I found Hannah standing there.

“What are you doing today? ..........Nothing! I thought so…Good! Today we are taking you out to be metrosexualised!” Hannah said before she even said hello. She never bothers with formalities, just gets straight to the point.

“What! ......I don’t want to do any gay stuff!” I replied as I resisted Hannah’s attempts to drag me out of my apartment by my sleeve

“Not homosexual you draino…..metrosexual! You’re in serious need of a make over Jas, and that’s what we are doing today”

“Hang on hang on hang on….what are you going to do to me? ….I don’t know if I’m going to like this!”

“Now Mr Domey it’s about fucking time you started trusting me and stop being so scared to do new things….I’m here to help you…so start showing me some appreciation OK!” She said in the angriest tone I had ever heard from her

“OoooK lets go” I whined

“He he he he he he…I’m so glad you’re talkable into things…be better if you were just a crazy do anything once kind of guy…but I guess this is more fun…you get to be my little project now!”

“I don’t know if I want to be a project?”

“I know…that’s why it’s so much fun” She said with a giggle

So off we went into the unknown. Hannah waited until we were on the train before she decided to ask me what my financial situation was at the moment. It wasn’t very good; I was living off Government hand outs after all. I did have about five hundred dollars saved up though. One of the few really good things about being a boring loser, who goes nowhere and does nothing and has no nice things, is that you just naturally don’t spend much money. Hannah promised me it would be more than enough for what she had in mind.

Hannah took me to this suburb I had never been before. I’m not really sure how to describe what it was like on first impressions. Quite a few words come to mind, but none of them on their own fit exactly. So I’ll just tell you some of them – funky, alternative, weird, gay, scary, dirty, arty, smelly, and strange. It was just this crazy little pocket of the world where people from all walks of life congregated seemingly just to be peculiar together.

As we got off the train station and walked towards the shops my first impression was that Hannah had taken me to a freak show. The very first two people I saw as we exited the station were two transsexuals. You might ask how I so accurately picked them out as she-hims. Well I’m no lady boy expert but when you’re dressed like these two were it’s not all that hard.

The first one was wearing nothing but a bra for a top, which showed quite real looking boobies in them, and then a pair of bike shorts which showed quite a solid looking package in it, the type of package which you never ever want to see inside a girls bike pants.

The second one was wearing a dress, again with real looking breasts protruding from the top but also had a goatee beard. I made an assumption that if she lifted her skirt for some reason I would also see a package in her/his underpants. I didn’t look long enough to confirm this assumption though. Not that I have anything against chicks with dicks per say, but when you look at freak of nature, you only look long enough to be horrified and then look away, attempting to erase it from your memory bank as quick as possible. I forget faces easily, I don’t forget freaks easily.

As we walked down the street I realized that as alternative as a neighborhood this was, there were still plenty of relatively normal people as well. There were just average looking student types and old people, just mixed in with guys with ear rings as chunky as my wrist, girls with purple hair and chains running from their nose to their ears, and lots and lots of gay couples.

I could tell Hannah was a regular in this neck of the woods. We hadn’t walked more than twenty feet before a girl came up to talk to her. Don’t you hate it when you’re with a friend, and someone they know comes up to talk to them, only thing is your friend makes an initial judgment that it will probably just be a quick hello and lets move on, and therefore doesn’t go through the introductions which are required before you can even stand next to them and feel somewhat welcome. However then the quick hello turns into a full on catch up session, so as they start going on about things like “Did you hear Clarrisa is pregnant?” and “Oh my god she is only fifteen do her parents know?” and “I would think so - her dad is the father!”, you’re just stuck standing there feeling like some weirdo who has sidled up next to them to eavesdrop on their private conversation. Meanwhile you’re trying to find the balance between not wanting to be a nosey nobody prying in on their intimate discussions, but also not wanting to just stand on the street twiddling your thumbs next to them, when they know all too well that you’re with them. So you end up standing next to them trying to look to outsiders like you were part of the conversation but trying to look to them that you’re not listening to what they’re saying. Which results in you making faces like you can see monkeys playing in their hair. Then the person who has approached your friend starts giving you looks like she has just remembered you from the time you came up to her on the street and stuck your hand straight down her jeans and started to giggle. Until eventually their conversation ends, and you and your friend walk off with her giving you some way too late explanation of their relationship history, while you’re wishing that a car would suddenly swerve to avoid hitting a stray dog and instead accidentally crush you up against a mail box! (Have I mentioned I’m not yet good in all social situations?)

Anyways I could also tell Hannah was a regular because she knew the area better than I know the fastest way to make myself the most uncomfortable person in a room. First thing we did was go for lunch. Hannah claimed she knew the best place for Asian food in the city and for some reason this so called best Asian chef in a city as big as ours sells his food somewhere that you have to by psychic to find.

To get there Hannah took us into a nondescript dark green door, which had no advertising or even an address on it. Then we entered an empty hall way, which was long and narrow. At the end we could choose between a dark stair case to the right going down, or a well lit one to the left going up. We went the dark one down. At the bottom of this surprisingly deep stair case was another nondescript door, which we opened up into another empty hallway. We walked down the hallway and there was another door, which led us out into a little garden area. We walked through the garden and into the back of a house through some fly screens, and inside was the craziest little restaurant I have seen.

It really wasn’t like a restaurant at all. It was more like someone’s living room, only instead of couches and televisions there were about seven tables. The tables were all full of old Chinese men, with wise old looks, and faces and bodies which looked like they had died three years earlier, and they were silently eating noodles from bowls with chopsticks.

As we entered a middle aged Chinese woman wearing one of those silk wrap around shiny Chinese dresses, this one bright purple with golden dragons all over it, came up to us and said “Welmon wack Miss Anar, please wollow we to wore table” (or something like that, I’m really not good at doing accents). We followed her down yet another hallway into a second dining area. This one was also full of old, old Chinese men silently eating noodles, but also had one empty table where we were instructed to sit, and an open kitchen where Mr Miaggi (I still swear it was actually him) from Karate Kid was busily cooking in a manner which from a distance seriously looked like he needed eight hands. He had about ten pots or pans going at once, and he was just rapidly flipping things and chopping things, barely even looking at what he was doing, it was just all instinct.

There were no menus on the table which made me quite nervous until Hannah explained to me that I could ask for any Asian meal I could think of and he would make it for me. Hannah tried to talk me into getting something called a ‘Seafood Laksa’, but when the hostess came back to “wake ouwer worder”, I ordered Satay Chicken. This resulted in about four of the old men at other tables to look up at me and give me scarly looks, “apparently not a popular choice” I thought. Hannah got the Laksa.

When the food arrived my first response was too thank god for not letting Hannah talk me into what she was having. A Seafood Laksa turned out to be a bowl of noodles and soup, but floating in the soup was about eight varieties of disgusting fish parts. The worst of which was small whole baby octopuses, and revoltingly fish heads, eyes and all. Hannah gulped it all up like she hadn’t eaten in months. Fortunately my concentration on her meal was soon replaced by the pure deliciousness of my own. It honestly was the best satay chicken I had ever had.

Finally as we ate Hannah decided to outlay her game plan for the day. Apparently the program had four distinct sessions. First would be clothes shopping, second would be a hair cut, third would be my appointment at something called a ‘day spa’, of which Hannah refused to deliberate on further, and forth was furniture shopping.

I expressed an initial reluctance to do just session two, oh and one and three, until Hannah gave me one of her trademark guilt trips about how her heart would be broken, and she had gone to a lot of trouble, and she had made appointments, and she had called in favors from friends, and she had made deposits, and how she had gone to church and prayed for guidance on our journey and how she wouldn’t be my friend anymore if I didn’t go through with it all, until I reluctantly agreed to place my entire faith and future into her trustful hands.

We then exited the restaurant to start the process. This required almost now expectantly a walk down a long hallway, and through a nondescript door, which led surprisingly into a the back of the most stereotypical Asian takeaway you will ever see, with a big glass case full of a variety of pre prepared meals, and a clientele of white students and tourists, and we exited the take away right onto the main busy shopping street. Hannah never explained “what the fuck was the deal with that place?”